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rebels and reds on Abeel
Thursday, December 20 2007
Mostly just to get out of the house with the dogs, I drove with them into Kingston on an errand to get a handful of supplies. First destination was P&T surplus, so I took the route I always take, which involves Zandhoek Road and DeWitt Mills Road and enters Kingston along Rondout Creek from the southwest.
Driven this way, the first major urban intersection on Abeel is at Wilbur Street, and I've always been a little mystified by the rebel stars and bars flying from a second story window there. It seems to be begging for a brick flung by one of the Kingston's many residents who come from a tradition of being oppressed by that flag. Today, though, its reactionary glory had been signficantly diminished by the flag flying exactly one window over: that of Red China. I wanted to know the story here. Was there an ongoing competition of flag ridiculousness between two apartments or were these being flown by a single schizophrenic flag collector?
At P&T Surplus I was delighted to find that they had a large number and variety of small medical and dental tools, including suture clamps, a variety of fine picks, and tiny scapels. These tools are nearly impossible to find through conventional brick and mortar retail outlets, so I bought $20 worth (which, at P&T Surplus, is a lot).
On the ride home I was listening to the local public radio station, WAMC, even though it was mostly local and regional news. Dave Lucas was reporting on the rise of so-called "purse parties," where people get together at someone's house and buy counterfeits of designer handbags and similar personal accoutrements. (Such merchandise is familiar to anyone who has ever strolled down Canal Street in Manhattan.) According to Lucas' report, there has been a crackdown on these parties as various levels of government have sought to do more to protect the interests of trademark holders. Now, to you, me, or most people this seems like government meddling excessively in the private affairs of citizens. Sure they're breaking the law, but so what? They are Davids having fun and Louis Vuitton, Rolex, et al are Goliaths. So the governments who crack down on this stuff have had to come up with some compelling reason to convince the citizenry that what they're doing is a good thing. And what is this reason? Believe it or not, the reason advanced during Lucas' report was terrorism, specifically that these cheap knockoffs are being sold to raise funds for terrorists. I've heard the same argument made for why our government has to compromise our civil liberties in the ongoing drug war, wasteful and counterproductive as it is. Now such arguments may carry some shred of validity, but any rational person looking at the problem of piracy (or drugs) realizes that the strongest incentive to engage in it is purely economic: there is money to be made, and usually this money is used the way money is always used when it is made: to pay rent, buy luxury items, and to otherwise afford a lifestyle to which a person has grown accustomed.
Mind you, I wasn't especially upset that government spokespeople were using the terrorism card as justification for their crackdown on purse parties. This, after all, is to be expected, particularly as American government at all levels have grown increasingly propagandistic. What upset me was that Dave Lucas felt no need to rebut these arguments. Couldn't he have found even one skeptic to point out that terrorism is the excuse of last resort for justifying all government oppression? When they do so it's like they're crying "Hitler," a term designed to end all discussion. It's infuriating! Dave Lucas, this is a proposal: if you ever have another government mouthpiece bringing up terrorism in a case where nothing has been blown up and no one has been killed, please contact me via this web page, and you can at least have my voice to restore rationality to the debate.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?071220 feedback
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